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Message: [QUOTE="Drew, post: 2725556, member: 3723"] [URL="https://theathletic.com/350014/2018/05/15/older-and-wiser-joe-dooley-is-back-for-a-second-act-at-east-carolina-bent-on-reviving-a-struggling-program/"]Older and wiser, Joe Dooley is back for a second act at East...[/URL] [I]Joe Dooley is getting a mulligan. His return to East Carolina 23 years after the school made him the nation’s youngest head coach in the country is in some ways a chance to rewrite his own history, a chance to take the knowledge he has since gained back to correct the mistakes and naivety of a first-time coach. Dooley was an assistant at Kansas when the Jayhawks won the national title in 2008. He spent the past five years as the coach at Florida Gulf Coast, where he won 114 games and never fewer than 21 in a season while making two NCAA Tournament appearances. Now 52, he believes he’s both smarter and wiser. But East Carolina? The Pirates haven’t made the NCAA Tournament since 1993, and over the past 21 years they have had just two winning seasons. The NCAA drought is the longest of the 17 North Carolina schools that compete in Division I. Even N.C. Central, which didn’t become a full-fledged Division I member until 2012, has earned a bid to three of the past five tournaments. (Elon, High Point, Gardner-Webb and Campbell have never made an appearance, but they only began playing in D-I between 1999 and 2002.) “I like challenges,” Dooley says. “I think there’s a ton of potential. Now it’s our time to fulfill the potential.” Coaches come and go at ECU, but not in a stepping-stone sort of way. The job has mostly offered up a long plank for coaches whose careers are winding down. Its location in the basketball-friendly state of North Carolina hasn’t helped. East Carolina is one of the toughest jobs in all of Division I, a job that only got tougher when the school moved to the American Athletic Conference in 2014.[/I] [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach